Madden NFL 24 Review - One Yard Forward, Two Yards Back

One of my fondest memories as a football fan is Chris Johnson's 2,000-yard season in 2009. As arguably the fastest player the league has ever seen, the running back forever known as CJ2K was a one-man highlight reel, turning would-be six-yard gains into 50+ yard touchdowns all season long. But if you watch those highlights, you'll find a common theme: Titans wideout Kenny Britt was so often downfield blocking, creating vital running lanes through which CJ would weave with his unrivaled quickness. Britt is an unsung hero of CJ's historic season. In Madden 24, it's been great to find players can now enjoy similarly helpful downfield blocking like never before. This fix to the running game is precisely the sort of tangible improvement I hope for with every new Madden game. But examples such as this are overshadowed by a lack of major additions to Madden's suite of features and modes.

That improvement to blocking has been a minor bullet point of EA's marketing in the run-up to release and is known as the Tactical Blocking System, essentially referring to an overhaul of how the AI linemen and other blockers target which defenders to remove from the play. This is easily my favorite new toy in Madden as its changes are apparent and make the ground game, or running after the catch, much more lifelike than before. But the publisher didn't hype up this change as much as others. Instead, EA buried this highlight behind two returning features: minigames and Superstar mode.

In neither case is their return nearly as helpful or interesting as some of the on-field tweaks. In the case of minigames, I find their return to be uneven at best. On one hand, a full Training Camp simulation that gives Franchise players a faster track to player improvements is at least rewarding, but the minigames themselves range from fun and clever to boring and simple. With bronze, silver, and gold medals correlating to XP earned for the player, it's worth playing for the XP attached to those awards, but some of the minigames are much better or worse than others.

Continue Reading at GameSpot

source https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/madden-nfl-24-review-one-yard-forward-two-yards-back/1900-6418106/?ftag=CAD-01-10abi2f

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Godfall Review

Godfall makes a good first impression. Even if you're playing on a moderately powerful PC, as I did, it's clear from the opening moments that developer Counterplay Games has endeavored to show off advancements in visual fidelity, no doubt in light of new hardware such as the PlayStation 5. From the way sparks fly to the myriad particles that coat every inch of its action and the reflectiveness of its gaudy gold and marble halls, Godfall wants you to know that next gen is here. Beyond the visual spectacle, however, lies a game that's immediately familiar and over-reliant on an amalgamation of loot-driven games from the past eight years or so. Godfall's mixture of loot progression and third-person melee combat has been described by Counterplay Games as a new type of genre: the looter-slasher. The name holds up insofar as you loot and slash things, but there's nothing about Godfall that feels intrinsically new. Diablo, Monster Hunter, and Warframe make up a portion o...
Read more

Days Gone Review - Farewell, Oregon

Image
Editor's Note: In May 2021, Sony ported Days Gone to PC. In addition to compiling two years' worth of updates since the 2019 game's initial launch, the Windows version offers opportunities for enhanced graphics and performance with more powerful gaming PCs. Mike Epstein delivers his impressions on the game's technical improvements and how they may change your experience playing the PC version of Days Gone. GameSpot's original review for Days Gone is below in full and the assessment for the PC version is integrated at the end. This review contains minor spoilers about mission structure and overall story direction. There are no spoilers for major narrative moments. Around 10 hours into Days Gone , you're thrown into a hunting tutorial apropos of nothing. The over-the-top libertarian character takes you out with a rifle and shows you how to track a deer, although you've already had a tracking tutorial. You're then tasked with getting more meat for you an...
Read more

Nioh 2 Review - Get Good And Die Trying

Nioh 2 is not to be trifled with. Building on the original's tough-as-nails reputation, Team Ninja's second samurai action-RPG brings back the original's penchant for punishing and highly nuanced combat. The sequel hones the original's distinctive take on the Souls-like without completely reinventing itself. The result is a long, tough slog that will push even the most challenge-hungry players to their breaking points as they fight for every inch of ground and become master samurai. Despite the title, Nioh 2 is a prequel, revealing the secret history of a decades-long period of war in medieval Japan. As the silent, customizable hero Hide, you fight to uncover the secret nature of "spirit stones," which grant supernatural power, and defeat hordes of Yokai across the country. The plot, which you mostly hear through cutscenes and exposition between missions, has an interesting historical bent, but it is really just glue to hold the levels together. Historically...
Read more